It was a bad year for lists.
Somewhere between January and July, the AFI
compiled, and then unfortunately made public,
its top 100 comedies of all time. Later, in response to that list, Dr. Sean Reiley, PhDD (The extra D means more
doctor!) and I programmed the Calculando
Calrissian 2000, our artificially intelligent database and list sorting software.
The Calculando cranked out a couple of lists before, regrettably, turning its
artificial intelligence towards genuine homicide. Rounding out 2000 was Entertainment
Weekly's deranged choice of Dancer In The Dark as the best movie of
the year and O Brother Where Art Thou? as the worst.
You read that right, reading fans, the
worst. Thanks to Entertainment Weekly, all lists - from the Ten Commandments to
the very best of Uriah Heep - have
been diminished.

Artist's conception of the Calculando
Calrissian in its pupal stage. The pupa can be identified by three brown bars spread
laterally across the thorax and by its Honda Rancher ATV, which, during pupation, the
Calculando Calrissian uses to run your fucking ass over. The adult stage is as yet
un-concepted by artists. Though they tell me it'll make the Loch Ness Monster look
like goddamn Bigfoot.

It was also a year of expectations lowered and then still not met. In Cleveland,
billboards went up to inform criminals that shooting someone while robbing them is more
serious than just robbing them. This lowered our already pretty low expectations of
how smart our local politicians are - I mean, if you want to teach criminals something,
maybe put some French history on a billboard, because they already know about
crime. It also lowered our expectations regarding how much longer the
social fabric is likely to hold together. If I had to plot a timeline of the
downfall of civilization, it'd go something like this: a) Billboards serve no real purpose
other than providing information about malt liquor to Latinos. b) Trading on the
good will they cultivated by being right about malt liquor, billboards become our last
hope in convincing people not to commit crimes. c) Billboards give up on that goal
and simply request that, while you're commiting your crimes, maybe just don't kill
anybody. d) Planet of the Apes.

Even Daikatana was a
disappointment. Demos, interviews, common sense, and screenshots all pointed to the
fact that it would most likely be the worst game ever made. But, once again, our
expectations were shattered when it turned out to stink in a completely unremarkable
way. It just regular stank.

And then at the very end of the year, one of the last remaining
expectations gamers had of games - that no product, no matter how awful, would actually,
say, light your keyboard on fire - was literally, though only virtually literally,
shattered when Red Storm's Anne McCaffrey's Freedom: First Resistance blew up my monitor. And though
it's unrelated to what we're talking about here, let me just take a second to remind Tom
Clancy to go fuck himself. With Anne McCaffrey's dick, if possible.

In light of all of this, we felt that more list making and expectation raising would be
in bad taste. And so we decided against giving out "Best Of" awards for
2000 or providing a "Most Anticipated" list for 2001. Honest to Christ, we
can't think of one more word to say about Warcraft 3, Halo, or Black and
White. But unlike every other site you visit, we're going to permit that simple fact
to shut us the Hell up. So that's that.

Or is it?

As it turns out, it was. For a few days. But, since it's looking like the
Internet will probably be gone by next year and since the pretty uncomplimentary swear
words we've used to describe the Chinese will most likely keep us off of the new Internet
they're building, we figure we'd better make some observations while the observatin's
good. These are provisionally our best of 2000 awards, but if we go under by next
January, you should consider these choices the best of all time. Because people will
inevitably call these awards the Oscars® of gaming, we've decided to simply call them the
Oscars. To avoid confusion with the original, we removed all of the Academy'
trademark symbols. We're going to give out one award a day for the next six days.

*This
award is neither sponsored by, endorsed by, nor, hopefully, seen by Pizza Hut or the
people at Pizza Hut. The edgy font was supplied by Marvin and not Pizza Hut, and
should not be considered representative of the actual edginess of your Pizza Hut the Edge
pizza pie.